Staying safe in Israel

I just got back from Shabbat in Kibbutz Nir-Am, which is located directly between Gaza and the Israeli town of Sderot. Nir-Am has been shelled for the past seven years with hundreds of Kassam rockets fired across the border, and I visited tonight to see how one family tries to live a normal life under abnormal circumstances.

I am blogging now, so I must have made it back safe. (Save a Kassam shot off five minutes after I arrived, the cab ride back, during which my driver entered the wrong side of a split highway, was more dangerous.) But I have to wonder what might have been had I gone into Jerusalem’s Old City today as I planned to.

I planned to walk from my hotel through the Jaffa Gate in the late morning but decided to go shopping for my wife and sister first. Fortunately, I ran out of time. Here’s what did happen at the Jaffa Gate:

A security guard shot and killed an Arab
attacker in the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday after the man shot and moderately wounded another security guard, police said.
Ten bystanders were lightly to moderately wounded in the shootout - apparently from the guard’s gunfire - including six Jews, two Armenians and two Muslims.

I’m waiting until tomorrow to go to the Old City.

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